Chair of judges Mariella Frostrup says prize's second all-female shortlist shows it's 'suited to women's innovative brilliance'
The author Lionel Shriver. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images
An all-female shortlist for the eighth annual BBC national short story award has been greeted by the chair of judges, Mariella Frostrup, as evidence that the style is "suited to the innovative brilliance of women writers".
Sarah Hall heads the list alongside Lionel Shriver, who appeared on another all-woman shortlist for the BBC award in 2009. By contrast, the Booker prize has never had an all-female shortlist in more than 40 years, and only three of the last 10 Nobel literature laureates have been women.
Frostrup said: "The 2013 shortlist is all-female, which suggests the short story is a form much suited to the innovative brilliance of women writers," she said. "From Charlotte Perkins Gilman onwards, many favoured short story writers are women."
Lionel Shriver is shortlisted for Prepositions, which takes the form of a letter between two female friends who both lost their husbands on 9/11, one as a result of the bombing and one for a different reason; and Granta best young British novelist 2013 Sarah Hall is shortlisted for Mrs Fox, about a woman who transforms into a vixen.
Debut author Lucy Wood is on the shortlist for Notes from the House Spirits, which explores the comings and goings of residents of an old house in Cornwall. Lisa Blower, whose short story Broken Crockery won a Guardian competition in 2009, is shortlisted for Barmouth, about a working-class family from Stoke-on-Trent. And Lavinia Greenlaw brings to bear her experience as the first artist-in-residence at the Science Museum in We Are Watching Something Terrible Happen, in which art and science collide. Sarah Lewis received a special mention for Healing the State of Man.
Another of this year's judges, the novelist Peter Hobbs, was unsurprised that the 2013 shortlist was all-female and focused instead on the quality of the shortlisted stories.
"We've got to the stage where an all-female list is not even worth mentioning," he said. "I don't really pay any attention to gender." Judges can choose to read anonymously, he continued. "For me it's easier that way because I can concentrate on the shape of the sentence and the story."
He added: "There was a lot of fighting among the judges at shortlist stage, with 10 stories in contention. Generally, the standard of submissions was very low. Very few people are good at short stories. It is a distinctive literary form that needs to work with the confines of itself, starting and ending in the right place, and having a narrative shape."
Frostrup and Hobbs are joined on the panel by the novelists Deborah Moggach and Mohsin Hamid, as well as Di Speirs, reading editor for BBC Radio.
The prize, to be announced on 8 October, is worth £15,000 to the winner, £3,000 to the runner-up, and £500 each to the other three shortlisted authors.
Five actors, including Hattie Morahan, who won a Critics' Circle award for her role as Nora in the Young Vic's acclaimed version of Ibsen's A Doll's House, will each read one of the shortlisted stories at 3.30pm on BBC Radio 4 from Monday 23 September. An anthology, The BBC National Short Story Award 2013, is also published on Monday.
Barmouth by Lisa Blower
We Are Watching Something Terrible Happen by Lavinia GreenlawMrs Fox by Sarah Hall
Notes from the House Spirits by Lucy Wood
Sarah Hall heads the list alongside Lionel Shriver, who appeared on another all-woman shortlist for the BBC award in 2009. By contrast, the Booker prize has never had an all-female shortlist in more than 40 years, and only three of the last 10 Nobel literature laureates have been women.
Frostrup said: "The 2013 shortlist is all-female, which suggests the short story is a form much suited to the innovative brilliance of women writers," she said. "From Charlotte Perkins Gilman onwards, many favoured short story writers are women."
Lionel Shriver is shortlisted for Prepositions, which takes the form of a letter between two female friends who both lost their husbands on 9/11, one as a result of the bombing and one for a different reason; and Granta best young British novelist 2013 Sarah Hall is shortlisted for Mrs Fox, about a woman who transforms into a vixen.
Debut author Lucy Wood is on the shortlist for Notes from the House Spirits, which explores the comings and goings of residents of an old house in Cornwall. Lisa Blower, whose short story Broken Crockery won a Guardian competition in 2009, is shortlisted for Barmouth, about a working-class family from Stoke-on-Trent. And Lavinia Greenlaw brings to bear her experience as the first artist-in-residence at the Science Museum in We Are Watching Something Terrible Happen, in which art and science collide. Sarah Lewis received a special mention for Healing the State of Man.
Another of this year's judges, the novelist Peter Hobbs, was unsurprised that the 2013 shortlist was all-female and focused instead on the quality of the shortlisted stories.
"We've got to the stage where an all-female list is not even worth mentioning," he said. "I don't really pay any attention to gender." Judges can choose to read anonymously, he continued. "For me it's easier that way because I can concentrate on the shape of the sentence and the story."
He added: "There was a lot of fighting among the judges at shortlist stage, with 10 stories in contention. Generally, the standard of submissions was very low. Very few people are good at short stories. It is a distinctive literary form that needs to work with the confines of itself, starting and ending in the right place, and having a narrative shape."
Frostrup and Hobbs are joined on the panel by the novelists Deborah Moggach and Mohsin Hamid, as well as Di Speirs, reading editor for BBC Radio.
The prize, to be announced on 8 October, is worth £15,000 to the winner, £3,000 to the runner-up, and £500 each to the other three shortlisted authors.
Five actors, including Hattie Morahan, who won a Critics' Circle award for her role as Nora in the Young Vic's acclaimed version of Ibsen's A Doll's House, will each read one of the shortlisted stories at 3.30pm on BBC Radio 4 from Monday 23 September. An anthology, The BBC National Short Story Award 2013, is also published on Monday.
The shortlist
Prepositions by Lionel ShriverBarmouth by Lisa Blower
We Are Watching Something Terrible Happen by Lavinia GreenlawMrs Fox by Sarah Hall
Notes from the House Spirits by Lucy Wood
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